


something

by Cân Cennau (gwenynnefydd)



Category: Agatha Christie's Poirot (TV)
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Summer, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 15:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenynnefydd/pseuds/C%C3%A2n%20Cennau
Summary: Summer always reminded Hastings of Poirot. Sometimes it burnt.





	something

**Author's Note:**

> This was a short fic I wrote when I was deep in the Poirot fandom back in 2014. I decided to dust it off a little and post it here.

It was always summer when I thought of him the most. Always summer, with the sand-coloured suits and sweet scent of pollen in the air. The afternoons listening to the wireless in shirtsleeves, the fruit tarts and honeyed scent of tisane floating like a warm blanket across the flat. The  _ clack clack clack  _ of Ms Lemon’s typewriter in the other room tapping out a summer’s beat, cutting through the warm air like a sharp bell. Poirot, sat at his desk, investigating some case or another. I lay on the sofa, ostentatiously reading the newspaper, but really I was watching Poirot. I was love with him, but even watching him caused my heart to ache with want, and it encouraged my melancholy to take over my thoughts.

Love was always a fanfare to me, a sparkling, glittering street parade marching along the roads of time. I had always watched couples pass me by, living and loving, proud of their desires and their affection. Perhaps it can be like that, perhaps marching to one’s own tune can be a love of sorts, but the wounds of past relationships always cut into bare heels and toes. My hidden desire for men, for particularly this man, had scorched my feet, and even as I play acted as the heterosexual man I had to be, love tore my soles apart. I marched with the band but the blood seeped from my feet like a jagged river. Soon it was too much, and fell to the floor and broke, and love marched on, overwhelming and overbearing until the parade ended and left me behind, leaving me to wallow in the bitterness of what could’ve been and what never was.

Wasn’t it Poirot who had warned me about love? How love of the fine feathered variety was not the truth of it all? He had warned me when I had met Dulcie Duveen, and I had not paid him heed, so full of fire and passion and anger. I had taken her hand, moved away to the Americas, left him behind. And then Cinderella and I had shattered, her glass slippers shattering on the ballroom floor as she ran away, the shards spreading across the continents and embedding themselves in my feet wherever I went. Dulcie had left, a year into our marriage, and I could not bring myself to miss her, only to be ashamed that I hadn’t managed to be normal for just one moment.

He was right. Why was he always right?

Sometimes I regretted what happened between Dulcie and I. Not because I didn’t love her, because I did. I truly did. But loving her was far easier than loving him, and now… Now, since knowing what love is, I cannot help but watch and wonder about the what-ifs and the never-could-bes. My innate need for romantic companionship now kept rearing its head whenever Poirot walked by, and my heart kept fluttering when he turned to me, and I couldn’t help in thrilling when Poirot spoke my name. His face is at the forefront in my mind most of the time these days, and nothing I do is keeping it away, like an angel sent to deliver a message that could never be dissuaded.

I laugh inwardly. An angel. That was what he was. A disciple of God - ethereally beautiful, revered, a bright star in the night sky, but wholly untouchable. Unapproachable. Unavailable. Sometimes I fantasized that he would fall from grace, for once ignore the interpretation of Leviticus and Romans, the modern day Lucifer. A man who would perhaps think of homosexuality as portrayed by David and Jonathan, and not of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah. But those were just that - fantasies. Delusions. Fleeting hopes that if I had any modicom of sense, I would erase from my mind completely.

There are so many days in which I craved a simple bond between us, simple platitudes, a question, an answer, a yes and an “I do”, a smile on a darkened street corner, a wink across a crowded room, a dance in the privacy of our home, and years in which to live in harmonious isolation. But liking is more important than loving - I had no desire to ruin our friendship with an ill-timed romance, with stumbling words and unexplained actions. Although my heart ached for an embrace or a simple platitude, I knew that a rejection would ruin everything. I was always waiting, for the right moment, and as I waited, the days rolled on and on and...

The right day. The right time. But could I wait much longer? The ticking of the biological clock stalked my thoughts like a bloodhound. I was not getting any younger, and neither was Poirot - I was now rapidly approaching forty-five, and Poirot himself must be on the ageing side of fifty. If I wasn’t careful, our whole lives would pass us by, and the only time I could express my feelings for him would be by his deathbed.

I had to do something.

I had to do  _ something _ .

“Poirot?” I asked, my mouth moving almost before I had decided to say anything.

“ _ Mon cher? _ ” Poirot looked over at me over his pince-nez “Are you well?”

“Perfectly fine, old boy. I just wondered if you…” I faltered over my words. “...if you’d like to come out to see a play with me tonight?  _ The Importance Of Being Earnest  _ is being performed at the theatre, it says here.”

Poirot thought for a moment. “That sounds acceptable.” he replied, and the benevolence of his smile warmed me to my core. “And perhaps dinner afterwards?”

“Sounds grand.” I smiled back, and turned back to the newspaper. That smile had whirled away my melancholy for just a moment, and with a lighter heart I went back to reading the cricket scores. Perhaps it was not  _ romance,  _ but our bond was a close thing, and for now, I had to be happy with that.

I  _ was  _ happy with that.

 


End file.
